The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly October 31-November 6 2011

David Jefferson answered the question “If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?” Congressman John Lewis compared Voter ID laws to a poll tax while Hose Democrats called on Secretaries of State to oppose those ID laws. The UK Guardian offered an international perspective on the GOP’s efforts to change state voting laws. Student IDs cannot be used as identification for voting in Tennessee. Microsoft Research proposed a crytographic hash as a security measure as a countermeasure against “trash attack” on voting systems and Egypt prepares for the country’s first post-revolution election and voters in Kyrgyzstan voted Sunday in a closely watched presidential election.

From the Verified Voting Blog: David Jefferson: If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?
National: Civil Rights Leader Rep. John Lewis: Voter ID Laws ‘Are A Poll Tax,’ ‘I Know What I Saw During The 60s’ | ThinkProgress
National: Democrats ask all 50 states to oppose new voter identification laws | The Washington Post
Editorials: The Republican ‘voter fraud’ fraud | Diane Roberts/guardian.co.uk
Tennessee: Student IDs deemed unacceptable as voter ID under new Tennessee law | The Daily Helmsman
National: Microsoft Research Proposes E-Voting Attack Mitigation | threatpost
Egypt: A guide to Egypt’s first post-revolution elections | IRIN Middle East
Kyrgyzstan: Voters in Kyrgyzstan cast presidential ballots | seattlepi.com

Nov 05, 2011
From the Verified Voting Blog: David Jefferson: If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?

There is widespread pressure around the country today for the introduction of some form of Internet voting in public elections that would allow people to vote online, all electronically, from their own personal computers or mobile devices. Proponents argue that Internet voting would offer greater speed and convenience, particularly for overseas and military voters and, in fact, any voters allowed to vote that way.

However, computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections. There is no way with current technology to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any security technology in the foreseeable future. Anyone from a disaffected misfit individual to a national intelligence agency can remotely attack an online election, modifying or filtering ballots in ways that are undetectable and uncorrectable of just disrupting the election and creating havoc. There are a host of such attacks that can be used singly or in combination. In the cyber security world today almost all of the advantages are with attackers, and any of these attacks can result in the wrong persons being elected, or initiatives wrongly passed or rejected.

Nonetheless, the proponents point to the fact that millions of people regularly bank and shop online every day without apparent problems,. They note that an online voting transaction resembles an ecommerce transaction, at least superficially. You connect your browser to the appropriate site, authenticate yourself, make your choices with the mouse, click on a final confirmation button, and you are done! All of the potential attacks alluded above apply equally to shopping and banking services, so what is the difference? People ask, quite naturally, “If it is safe to do my banking and shopping online, why can’t I vote online?”

This is a very fair question, and it deserves a careful, thorough answer because the reasons are not obvious. Unfortunately it requires substantial development to explain fully. But in brief, our answer is in two-parts:

1. It is not actually “safe” to conduct ecommerce transactions online. It is in fact very risky, more so every day, and essentially all those risks apply equally to online voting transactions.

2. The technical security, privacy, and transparency requirements for voting are structurally different from, and much more stringent than, those for ecommerce transactions. Even if ecommerce transactions were safe, the security technology underpinning them would not suffice for voting. In particular, the security and privacy requirements for voting are unique and in tension in a way that has no analog in the ecommerce world.

The <a href=“http://thevotingnews.com/docs/Jefferson_IV_Revised.pdf”>full essay (PDF)</a> expands upon these two points in order.

Full Article: If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online? | Verified Voting Blog.

Republican lawmakers across the country have been waging an successful campaign to restrict the right to vote. States are cracking down on non-profit organizations’ registration drives, reducing early voting periods, and repealing laws allowing citizens to register to vote at the polls on Election day, leaving as many as 5 million voters facing disenfranchisement in the 2012 election. Perhaps the most radical restriction is the GOP’s push for voter ID laws that require citizens to obtain and present state-approved photo identification to vote. These laws disproportionately (and perhaps purposefully) affect minorities, seniors, and low-income people who typically make up the Democratic base.

At least six states have passed such restrictions. Incensed by the regressive trend, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) put the Republican efforts into historical context. “In 2011, we should be ashamed,” he said Tuesday night on the House floor. “We should be making it easy, simple, and convenient to vote. Instead we’re creating barriers and making it more difficult.” Noting that “we cannot separate the dangerous trend across this nation from our history,” Lewis warned of our “step backward towards another dark time in our history.” Singling out the voter ID laws as a particular “threat,” Lewis reiterated, “Make no mistake, these voter ID laws are a poll tax. I know what I saw during the 60s“:

“Each and every voter ID law is a real threat to voting rights in America. Make no mistake, these voter ID laws are a poll tax. I know what I saw during the 60s. I saw poll tax. And you cannot deny that these ID laws are another form of a poll tax. In an economy where people are already struggling to pay for the most basic necessities, there are too many citizens that would be unable to afford the fees and transportation costs involved in getting government issued photo Ids. Despite all the voter ID laws across the country, there’s no convincing evidence — no evidence at all — that voter fraud is a problem in our election problem.”

Full Article: Civil Rights Leader Rep. John Lewis: Voter ID Laws ‘Are A Poll Tax,’ ‘I Know What I Saw During The 60s’ | ThinkProgress.

House Democrats asked secretaries of state in all 50 states to oppose new voter identification laws because they threaten the right to vote for many Americans. “Today we are witnessing a concerted effort by Republican lawmakers across several states to place a new obstacle in front of minorities, low-income families and young people who seek to exercise their right to vote,” said Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said in a news conference Thursday.

The Democrats made the plea in a letter in which they ask the secretaries of state to put aside partisan considerations and be vigilant against fraud and protect access to the polls for all citizens. The letter had 196 House supporters Thursday, including delegates to U.S. territories.

Hoyer said states are trying to make it harder to vote through recently passed laws that require specific types of photo identification to cast ballots, reductions in the number of early voting days and tougher laws on collecting registrations.

Full Article: Democrats ask all 50 states to oppose new voter identification laws — The Washington Post.

In the 2008 election, Barack Obama benefited from extended voting hours and early voting days, as well as rules allowing citizens to register and vote on the same day. It’s pretty obvious why: students, the elderly, and hourly-wage workers who can’t queue for hours without making the boss angry, tend to favor Democrats. Florida – which became a byword for Banana Republicanism and electoral corruption 11 years ago – has been positively zealous in attempts to restrict voting rights on the grounds that easy voting leads to waste, fraud and abuse. One lawmaker pitched a hissy fit, claiming that dead actors (Paul Newman, for one) constantly turn up on voter rolls and that “Mickey Mouse” had registered to vote in Orlando. State senator Mike Bennett wants to make voting “harder”; after all, he said, “people in Africa literally walk 200 or 300 miles so they can have the opportunity to do what we do, and we want to make it more convenient? How much more convenient do you want to make it?”

Florida Republicans addressed the problem of “convenience” earlier this year by cutting early voting days from 14 to eight, cutting budgets for expanded polling places and eliminating Sunday voting: African American (and some Latino) churches had successfully run a post-sermon“Souls to the Polls” operation, getting out the vote in 2004, 2006 and 2008. Florida has also attacked civic-minded people trying to register new voters. Jill Ciccarelli, a teacher at New Smyrna Beach High School, wanted to foster a sense of citizenship amongst her pupils, so she helped the ones who were old enough register. She didn’t know she was breaking the law. Now, all individuals or groups must file a “third party registration organisation” form with the state, and instead of having ten days to deliver the paperwork,they must now do it in 48 hours. Failure to comply could draw felony charges and thousands of dollars in fines.

… But why let the facts get in the way of rigging an election? Some conservative sages have let the veil slip long enough for us to see what’s really going on. Former Arkansas governor-turned-paid-Murdoch-mediaite Mike Huckabee likes to say that if people have friends who don’t plan to vote the rightwing line, “Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date.”

Huckabee protests he’s just joking. But Matthew Vadum, a Fox News favorite and part of the paranoid right’s brain trust, isn’t being remotely funny when he says “registering the poor to vote is un-American.” Nor was American Legislative Exchange Council co-founder Paul Weyrich back in the 1980s, when he said, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Obviously, democracy is no fun if just anyone can play.

Full Article: The Republican ‘voter fraud’ fraud | Diane Roberts | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

With free admission and discounts to local attractions and restaurants, most students are quick to wield the power of their student identification, but a new law requiring photo identification at the polls next year cuts that power short. Effective Jan. 1, 2012, all Tennessee voters are required to have a photo ID if they expect to cast a ballot. The current law requires voters only to show proof of signature.

Acceptable forms of photo ID include a Tennessee driver’s license, a valid photo ID issued by the state of Tennessee or any other state in the United States, a valid United States passport, an employee photo ID card issued by Tennessee or any state in the United States or a military photo ID card. However, student identification is not included in the list, despite the required photo of the student on an ID card by most colleges.

Senator Bill Ketron, who sponsored the law, said it was passed to prevent voter fraud, and student IDs were excluded as an acceptable form of identification because they are easy to manipulate. “Well, between the public and the private universities, we felt there probably was not enough control on the issuance of those IDs as there would be in the state,” he said. “In the bill, you can even have an expired driver’s license or passport to vote. There are 14 or 15 articles you could use with a photo.”

… Steven Mulroy, U of M law professor and voter rights advocate, said the fact that a gun ID will work, but a student ID will not for voting purposes is unfair and that the new law will suppress voter turnout among the elderly, poor, minorities and the disabled.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem.” Mulroy said. “These groups are less able than others to navigate the system and physically transport to where they need to go to for this to work. They won’t be able to go and get the ID.” More frequent than not, tampering with votes is an “inside job,” as opposed to someone showing up and impersonating a voter, Mulroy said.

Full Article: Student IDs deemed unacceptable as voter ID under new Tennessee law — News — The Daily Helmsman.

Microsoft Research has proposed a mitigation for a known potential attack against verifiable electronic voting machines that could help prevent insiders from being able to alter votes after the fact. The countermeasure to the “trash attack” involves adding a cryptographic hash to the receipts that voters receive.

Many verifiable voting systems already include hashes on the receipts, but that hash typically is of the ballot data for each specific voter. The idea proposed by Microsoft Research involves using a running hash that would add a hash of the previous voter’s receipt to each person’s receipt, ideally preventing a privileged insider from using discarded receipts to alter votes. The trash attack that the mitigation is designed to address involves election workers or others who might be motivated to change votes gathering discarded receipts and then altering those votes.

“The provision of receipts to voters who may not want them, however, suggests a very simple means by which election workers could find votes that are good candidates for alteration: poll workers could simply collect the contents of the nearest trash receptacles. Any receipts that have been discarded by voters would be strongly correlated with votes that could be altered without detection.3 Active collection of receipts may also be viable through social engineering,” Josh Benaloh of Microsoft Research and Eric Lazarus of DecisionSmith wrote in a research paper, “The Trash Attack”.

Electronic voting systems have made their way into a lot of jurisdictions in recent years, replacing older manual machines. But security researchers have discovered a number of serious security vulnerabilities in various machines, which could lead to vote alteration and questionable election results.

The solution that Benaloh and Lazarus propose would involve generating an initial value for each machine, and the value would comprise in part the date of the election and a unique identifier for the device.

“If a running hash were to be incorporated, this insider’s options would be severely limited. If the insider had the ability to alter a ballot and a corresponding running hash value in real time (i.e. before the next voter uses a device), then the same 60% success rate could be achieved. But if the insider cannot mount a real-time attack, after-the-fact alteration of 10 ballots would only escape detection if they were all cast after the last ballot whose corresponding receipt was verified by a voter. Not only does this substantially restrict the pool of ballots available to the insider, but this threat can now be completely eliminated by a single diligent voter or observer recording the final running hash value at the end of the voting period,” the paper says.

The researchers said that the mitigation may need to be implemented differently in each voting system, but that the result would be the same.

Full Article: Microsoft Research Proposes E-Voting Attack Mitigation | threatpost.

Millions of Egyptians will head to the polls on 28 November in the first parliamentary vote after a popular uprising ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The elections end decades of what was effectively one-party rule and will establish a parliament to lead the drafting of a new constitution within a year. If approved in a subsequent referendum, this constitution will shape Egypt’s future.

But few Egyptians understand the complex election system or know what the parties represent. “The election system is really confusing,” Saed Abdel Hafez, chairman of the local NGO, Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue, told IRIN. “Because people do not understand the system, they will most likely vote for the people or the powers they used to vote for in the past. This means that the next parliament will not reflect the new political realities created by the revolution.”

This, analysts say, could send protesters back to the streets and prolong instability. The election system is really confusing. Because people do not understand the system, they will most likely vote for the people or the powers they used to vote for in the past. This means that the next parliament will not reflect the new political realities created by the revolution.The election law adopts a mixed system – members in one-third of the constituencies (the smaller ones) will be elected in a first-past-the-post system, while members in two-thirds of the constituencies (the larger ones) will be elected through proportional representation. The electoral districts have been redrawn to suit the new system.

One-third of the seats are reserved for independent candidates, to give non-party members an equal chance. Some fear this will benefit former members of Mubarak’s now disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP), who are running as independents. But political parties can field candidates against them as independents.

Voters in the turbulent Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan voted Sunday in a presidential election that could set a democratic example for authoritarian neighbors. While international observers have hailed the wide range of candidates on offer and recent improvements to electoral legislation, there are concerns that the vote could ignite interregional tensions.

Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished nation of around 5 million people on China’s western fringes, is home to both U.S. and Russian military air bases, making its fortunes the subject of lively international interest.

Outgoing President Roza Otunbayeva, a seasoned diplomat who served as ambassador in Washington and London and has been running the country as interim leader since 2010, will step down later this year to make way for the election winner. That sets the stage for the first peaceful transition of power in this economically struggling ex-Soviet nation’s history.

The election primarily pits front-runner Almazbek Atambayev against two popular nationalist politicians — Kamchibek Tashiyev and Adakhan Madumarov.

In the likely event that nobody garners more than 50 percent of the ballots, a runoff will have to be held within a month between the two top vote-getters.

Atambayev, who had the best-funded campaign and enjoyed significant public exposure by serving as prime minister until last month, voiced hope for an outright victory.

“I have bright hopes, it is time for our country to live, achieve harmony and flourish. People are tired of political battles and meetings,” he said after voting.

Full Article: Voters in Kyrgyzstan cast presidential ballots — seattlepi.com….

The Voting News Weekly: TVN Weekly October 31-November 6 2011

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